


until you devour me

by macneiceisms



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Hannibal is Hannibal, M/M, Single Parent Will Graham
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28099548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macneiceisms/pseuds/macneiceisms
Summary: Four years after the harrowing end of his piloting career, veteran Ranger Will Graham is pulled out of his quiet life in Alaska by Marshal Jack Crawford and back into his old Jaeger.
Relationships: Will Graham & Abigail Hobbs, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Who doesn't love a good Pacific Rim AU? Tags/rating may change in the future. There won't be Will/Alana in this any more than there is in canon.

**Anchorage, Alaska**

“I don’t like you ambushing him, Jack,” said Alana over the lashing rain, the hum of the car engine and the steady _thwick thwick_ of the windshield wipers.

Jack Crawford gripped the wheel tighter, as if that could smooth the gravel road they’d turned onto. Or smooth the inevitable explosion to come.

“I need him, Alana.”

Alana pressed her lips tight.

“If... _if_ you convince him, by some miracle, to come back to the program, how long do you think he’ll last?” Alana said quietly. “Are you really willing to drag him back into a Jaeger after what happened four years ago? Losing a co-pilot is a serious trauma, Jack. You should know.”

Jack scowled, his face like thunder.

“I _know_ ,” he murmured, barely audible over the torrential spring rain hammering on the car. “But Will Graham didn’t _lose_ his co-pilot, Alana. And no one can do what he does. I need you in my court.”

Alana worked her coat button over in her fingers. Ethics of her graduate and postgraduate days seemed less and less important in this new world-torn world. If the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps and Marshal Jack Crawford needed a Ranger, even if that Ranger was a traumatized veteran better left to an isolated life as a mechanic on decommissioned Jaegers, they’d stop at nothing to get that Ranger.

It didn’t help that the Ranger in question was Will Graham.

“I failed his psych eval four years ago,” Alana said, staring out at the dark pines illuminated by the headlights along the gravel drive.

She had the fleeting fear of meeting a bear or a moose out in the woods here. Alaska didn’t sit right with her. Too wild.

“We have better tech. Better doctors. He’s had four years of quiet, maybe he’s not the same man you remember,” Jack said.

“Maybe,” said Alana.

Finally, a pinprick of light flickered through the trees. As the drive curved, the light resolved into the warm glow of a small log cabin. She could just make out an old pickup truck parked in front of a barn behind the house. In the cabin window, a dark shape flashed.

“Neither of us knows what we’re going to find in there,” Alana warned as Jack parked the car behind Will Graham’s truck. “Be delicate.”

Over the deafening pattern of rain, a door slammed.

“Oh, shit,” Alana gasped.

Out on the covered porch, Will Graham stood with a shotgun pointed right at them. He looked wilder and rougher than she remembered. When she’d met him half a decade ago, plucked out of Homicide in New Orleans, he’d had neatly brushed, boyish hair and a devastatingly sharp jaw with the occasional five o-clock shadow. He’d been gorgeous and dangerous and she’d _wanted_ him to the point where she couldn’t stand to be in the same room alone with him.

This was Will Graham, unmoored. His hair curled wildly over his forehead, not any longer than before but no longer smoothed down. He sported a close-trimmed beard, a thick flannel, and a canvas coat over it. If she didn’t know for a fact that they were meeting Will Graham, she might have failed to connect this back country man with the one who’d worn tight crewnecks and slim military cargo pants and combat boots, looking like a soldier.

Her pulse thrummed.

Jack steadied her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “It’s not pointed at us. Just a warning. For show. But just in case, stay in the car until I bring you out.”

Alana nodded jerkily.

“Careful,” she breathed.

Jack huffed. “Always am.”

Jack wasn’t careful, he was pathologically self-assured. He shut the engine off, plunging the barn and trees ahead back into darkness. Will Graham’s porch light weakly glinted off the slick shapes until rain smothered her sightline through the windshield. Jack got out of the car, unfurling his enormous golf umbrella to shield his nice camel trench coat and fedora from the worst of the rain. The thick scent of rain and pine trees and something more animalic rushed in with the deafening roar of rain. Vaguely, she could make out a chorus of dogs barking.

“Marshal Crawford,” Will Graham called from the porch.

The light glowed around his wild curls like a halo. His electric stare pierced the dark and held Jack there like a butterfly pinned in a display case. Like one of Hannibal’s little curios in his old office at Hopkins.

“Will Graham,” said Jack, tipping his head in a somber greeting. “Can we come in?”

“We?” Will said, lifting his gun an inch, peering through the rain for a sign of life in the car.

Alana tensed. Jack swung around the other side of the car, though why he thought it was safe or sane for her to get out with a gun pointed at her head, she’d never understand. The rain soaked the bottom hem of her trousers instantly. Mud squelched under her heeled boots. Why’d Alaska have to be so damn _cold_? She missed the warmth of Hong Kong.

“I trust you’ve met Dr. Bloom, Mr. Graham,” said Crawford. “I think she’d like to get out of the rain.”

With a heavy exhale, Will lowered the gun. He jerked his head for them to follow and slipped back inside to the agitated dogs. Alana and Jack followed, both eying the dogs warily. Mingled scents of gun or engine oil, coffee, and a masculine aftershave hung over the fainter scent of dogs.

“Tch,” Will commanded. “Stay.”

The dogs fell absolutely silent upon the strangers entering the cabin. Alana counted seven of mostly the same sleek, sporty build she saw around these parts. Their eyes tracked them as Will pointed her and Jack to two chairs by a crackling wood-burner.

Alana and Jack wiped their feet on the doormat to keep the mud out. The cabin screamed comfortable, eternal bachelorhood. Living, dining, and small kitchen in one. Rustic. A complete mishmash of furniture. Shockingly, she spotted a bed on the other side of the living room with a dresser. Did he sleep in there? 

“Hope you aren’t allergic,” Will said, shrugging off his coat.

“Nope,” said Jack.

Alana shook her head. “Me neither.”

“Good.”

The dogs didn’t move, even as Alana took a low-slung mid-century lounger in mustard bouclé and Jack settled in a wooden captain’s chair. It groaned under his weight. The cheery fire chased away the chill that found her between the car and the cabin and Alana melted into its halo of heat.

While Will — gun still in hand — milled around the dogs, disbursing treats of some sort to settle them down, Alana glanced around the main space. There were hallmarks of backcountry living, including a mounted fish, a vertical rack of fishing rods, and a desk with a magnifying glass and a little feathered object under it. She spotted two shotgun racks, and with a small sense of unease saw them both empty. Some kind of disassembled motor lay right next to her chair.

Despite the overall effect of general clutter in Will’s cabin, on second look, the place was spotless. Neither her chair nor the loveseat cutting the fireplace area off from the rest of room had any dog hair on it. No dust. No clothes strewn around. No books forgotten except a copy of _The Oresteia_ with a single dog-ear on the loveseat. Even Will’s bed in the middle of the room had hospital corners on the blanket. Order and chaos and order again.

Consumed by the details of the space and everything they said about Will Graham, Alana startled when Will collapsed on the loveseat, legs spread, shotgun over his lap. His body belied no tension while his eyes, dark as the roiling Pacific, sent a wild current down her spine as they focused on her. _Dangerous,_ some primal part of her brain supplied. Attraction and fear swirled like a miasma.

“Nice to see ya, Dr. Bloom,” Will said, wry smile on his lips.

She remembered Will’s eerie perceptiveness, and wondered if and when he’d clocked her attraction. If he was taunting her with it. _Unkind, Alana,_ she chastised herself. Most people didn’t treat human interactions like some grand game of chess. Will was traumatized. A survivor.

“How are you, Will?” she asked.

The smile faded into a quick huff of air through the nose.

“As well as I can be,” he said. He unfolded from the loveseat with silent grace, setting his shotgun aside. “Drink?”

He arched his brow at Jack and Alana in turn in question, poised by the side table littered in bottles of amber liquid in various states of consumption.

“One finger, I’m driving,” Jack agreed.

Alana shook her head. “I’m more of a beer girl.”

At that, Will grinned. Deep lines carved his cheeks, transforming his face from all sweeping angles to something brilliantly boyish.

“I got a brown ale in the fridge if you like. It’s really for —” He abruptly stopped. “I can get you some water, if not.”

“Ale’s fine,” she said.

Will nodded and poured two glasses of some unfamiliar bottle of whiskey that had a green circle on the label. One small serving, which he handed to Jack, and a generous half-glass for himself, which he left on the liquor table while he rifled in the fridge for her beer.

She found herself unwinding, eased by Jack, Will’s gentle hospitality, and the lack of gun in his hands. Maybe Jack had been right. Maybe the withdrawn, nervous, and unstable Will Graham who never looked anyone in the eye didn’t exist anymore.

Her eyes trailed over his book collection which, except for the texts on cooking seafood or boat motors, fit better with the eclectic, elevated tastes of her old mentor than a blue-collar veteran Ranger with too many dogs. Will came back with the bottle and a bottle opener and popped it open in front of her. The gesture eased her again and the beer was smooth and cold and oaky. Nice to sip while the fire flushed her face pink, leaving her skin hot and tight. 

“Sorry about the gun, Dr. Bloom. Black government car comes up to my house in the night with no warning...doesn’t put a man at ease,” he said.

“Understandable,” said Jack. “Whiskey’s good. Smooth.”

Alana didn’t like that Jack had answered for her, though he was right. It was understandable, especially for a man like Will Graham, hounded by reporters. Will’s sharp glance Jack’s way suggested he wasn’t any more pleased by Jack speaking for Alana than Alana was.

“Well, if a man has a vice it might as well cost enough to keep him honest,” Will said, a little of his drawl creeping through.

He settled back into the loveseat with his glass. Alana watched the shift of muscle with hopefully clinical detachment. _Pilot. Ranger. He has to be in good shape._

“Amen to that,” Jack said.

Will grinned again. With two clicks of his tongue the previously still dogs scrambled to life. A small brown and white terrier immediately leapt into Will’s lap. Will pet him absently with one hand while he downed whiskey sip by steady sip with the other. Both hands were bare, even four years later.

A sleek black dog sniffed around Alana’s knees, while another sniffed at her shoes. A big black and tan dog with blue eyes milled around Jack. Two more dogs of the same husky-esque size and build sniffed around, though they were all rather coarsely short-coated. Unmoving on the other side of the room sat a lovely, fluffy brindled chestnut mutt.

“These all yours?” Alana asked.

“I adopt some out when the right people come by. Most of these guys are newly retired sled dogs. This is is Buster,” Will said, pointing to terrier in his lap. “Kodiak, Leila, Gellert, Hawk, Trouble and then Winston over there.”

“They’re well trained,” she said.

Will’s lip twitched as he pet Buster, now more settled. “They’re alright. Trouble’s new and a shaky little demon and Buster runs after rabbits, but I can’t blame ‘em for their instincts.”

Alana smiled, but itched to get to the point of the conversation. Will beat her to it.

“What brings you and Dr. Bloom all the way out of Hong Kong to my house in the middle of damn nowhere, Alaska, unannounced, at nine on a Tuesday?” said Will conversationally. “Gut tells me nothing good.”

Jack didn’t approach Will’s inquiry directly.

“It’s been a while, Mr. Graham,” said Jack. “How’s Alaska treating you?”

“Two years since we spoke. You took issue with my proposal,” Will frowned. “As for Alaska, me and the dogs both like the quiet. And though I have a few guesses, I want to know what kind of business you have disrupting my quiet.”

“We’re here on PPDC business,” Alana said.

“We have a new influx out by Hong Kong,” Jack said. “I expect we’ll have a leak sooner or later to the press —” Will distinctly muttered _Freddie_ under his breath — “but for now it’s under wraps.”

“How bad?”

“Two Category Threes in six days,” Jack said.

Will let out a low whistle.

“You moving teams out there? Jaegers?” Will asked. “You got enough?”

“We have enough Jaegers.”

Will’s expression shuttered.

“You low on pilots?” he asked, low and dark.

“Thanks to your brush with fame —” Will scoffed — “we have a surplus of unpaired rookies. And thanks to the last hit six months ago, a surplus of unpaired veterans.”

“Jesus, Marshal,” Will breathed. He knocked back the rest of his whiskey and restless, dislodged Buster to pour himself an even larger glass. “How many?”

“More than thirty total,” Jack said.

“A bunch of trumped up cocky rookies with no drift partners and a bag of washed up vets who’ve lost half of themselves,” Will ground out. He drank. Barked a harsh, dark, laugh, and drank again. “I told you two years ago to focus on loosening the drift requirements. Spend time making it so that the copilot bond wasn’t so deep, so...obliterating. So that when you lose your partner, because we lose partners all the time, it doesn’t cut you in half.”

“We’ve tried, Mr. Graham —”

“It’s Will,” he snapped.

“—Will. We’ve tried. I know we had our disagreements but I respect your opinion and after Miriam, I _tried._ ”

Will’s smile despaired.

“Whatever we’ve tried, the Jaeger’s operate best with extremely high drift compatibility,” Alana butted in. “You’re the only one — the only pilot in the whole program — who can do that with anyone.”

Will stared at her, then Jack. He looked haunted. Alana imagined something like, _don’t you think I know that?_ on the tip of his tongue.

“You know that’s not drifting,” Will said, voice gone rough.

Alana blinked, taken aback. Will _never_ spoke about whatever made him able to pilot with just about anyone. “What would you call it?”

He opened his mouth as if to answer, but seemed to think better of it.

“What do you need from me, Marshal?” he said, the words caught on an exhale.

“I need to borrow your mind for a while,” Jack said.

“Just my mind?” Will sneered. “For what, matching up pilots? You have a whole team of shrinks — sorry Dr. Bloom — perfectly qualified to do that.”

“Dr. Bloom and our other psychologists and psychiatrists can read the evaluations and the reports, sure,” Jack conceded. “But only you can _connect.”_

Will’s jaw twitched in displeasure.

“Jack,” Alana warned.

Will crossed his arms over his chest, staring at Jack unblinking.

“Drift’s bad for me,” Will said. “You know what happened last time.”

“I won’t put you in anything long term, not like Hobbs. We have tons of candidates you can choose yourself. All on rotation, so you don’t get in too deep. Hell, maybe you can figure out how to pair them off and spare yourself,” said Jack.

Will sucked in a sharp breath and flinched away from them both, rubbing his face in his hands as if to clear the sticky ooze of their presence in his home as it clung to him like coagulating blood.

“Will, I need you. The PPDC needs you. Damn, the whole world needs you. You’re a damn fine Ranger and you’ve got a first-rate mind. I won’t let it crack,” said Crawford.

Will ran his hands across his face.

“I know I’m one of the best veterans you got but I’m still a veteran. Whole rabble of issues. Left arm’s shot. There’s a reason I only do mechanics now,” Will barked, avoiding Alana and Crawford’s eyes in a way he hadn’t done since they arrived.

It jolted Alana’s memory of the mercurial young Ranger Graham, all shy smiles and strange steeliness. Too rough and too soft all at once. She pulled a long draught of beer, absently petting a black-haired dog whose name she couldn’t quite remember. Kodiak, maybe?

“We can make sure you’ve got counseling in addition to the regular brain scans and physicals,” Alana said.

“And get another person digging around in my brain?” Will snapped.

“I know you don’t like therapy, but it could really help you if you let it.”

“Therapy doesn’t work on me, Dr. Bloom,” he said.

“You can bring a dog,” Jack said.

That brought Will up short.

“Fuckin’ hell.”

He downed the last of his second drink, looking as sober as he had before the first one. _High tolerance. Regular drinker. Not an alcoholic. Not yet, and if he has anything to say about it, not ever._ Will rubbed his face and beard and neck again before titling his head to the beamed ceiling and letting his eyes flutter shut.

“We’re moving Shrike on Thursday,” Jack said.

And just like that, Jack had hooked Will Graham. No, not hooked. No hook, no line, no sinker for this slippery fish. Just scooped him out of the water with no care as to what came up with the net. Dog, Jaeger. That was all it took to push Will Graham out of retirement.

“She’s not operational,” Will protested.

“She will be,” Jack said. “We have a dedicated team for conn-pod repairs in addition to the larger upgrades. Alana and I are leaving tomorrow. We hope you’ll be on that flight with us.”

Will’s expression shuttered.

“I won’t be on that flight, Marshal,” Will said, and that was the end of that.

Alana frowned. They’d had him. She’d eaten her words to Jack. She’d been sure.

“Will, please,” she started.

“I’d thank you for coming out here if I meant it,” he said. “It was nice seeing you, Dr. Bloom, but I think it’s best you and the Marshal be leaving now.”

“Will you think about it?” Alana asked, smoothing her coat as she stood.

Will took her half-empty bottle, smiling wry and dispirited. He took Jack’s glass and his own in his other hand, pinched together between two fingers. His jaw worked silently as he poured out Alana’s beer and rinsed out the glasses in the kitchen sink.

“With you two coming here?” Will said, funereal. “I’ll be thinking about whether I want to or not.”

“You’re needed, Will,” Jack said. The dogs milled around in a swirl of fur and wet noses brushing against hands. “It’s not the same scale of people you saved on the police force. It’s the whole damn world.”

Will’s expression stormy and unreadable, he took Jack’s offered hand by the front door and shook it. He shook Alana’s too, though he gave her a small smile. His warm, rough palm sent a jolt of heat up her arm. She wondered if, like Hannibal Lecter, he was just throwing her off her guard with flirtation in some grand game of chess she wasn’t quite privy to.

“I hope I see you again, Will,” she said, smiling back with her head tilted slightly.

“Bye Dr. Bloom, bye Marshal Crawford,” was all Will said before leaving them to the cold downpour outside.

The door closing sounded like a shotgun blast.

“He’s coming,” Alana said when she settled in the car and buckled her seatbelt. Her coat and pants were wet again. “He just wants us to think it was his idea in the first place.”

Jack chuckled. “He can think what he wants, as long as he’s in a Jaeger. You did good in there. No shouting.”

“No, _you_ did good,” Alana said. As Jack started the car and it rumbled onto the water-logged road, she felt something cold settle in her. “Oh. I was your bait.”

Jack didn’t say anything.

“It wasn’t me, Jack. It was Requiem Shrike,” Alana said.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will gets acquainted with the Hong Kong Shatterdome.

**Hong Kong Shatterdome** ****

“Jack send you to greet me?” Will asked, standing by the vast maw of the Shatterdome with his heavy duffel bag slung over his good shoulder and Winston sitting patiently beside him.

Hong Kong was gray, but not like Alaska was gray. Gasoline and smoke and pollution choked every breath and if a Kaiju attack didn’t kill him, the smog would. The only bright spot was Alana Bloom walking towards him, green blouse and red lips a beacon amongst the gray. She’d shed the coat from Alaska, and her dark hair, long and loose then, was pulled into an elaborate bun.

“Hey, Will.” She smiled that enigmatic smile, at once clinically and very much _not_ clinically curious. “I’m glad you changed your mind.”

Winston nudged Will’s hand with a wet nose, then reached out to sniff Dr. Bloom’s tentatively outstretched hand. He shifted his duffel bag.

“Didn’t have much choice,” he grumbled, resisting the urge to complain about how long he’d been standing out here on the tarmac.

 _Get a grip, Graham,_ he chided himself. If he could handle four hours of combat in a conn-pod, he could handle waiting ten minutes. He’d arrived early, anyways.

Will rubbed his dry, tired eyes. He felt like roadkill. His head threatened to split open, his throat and sinuses were parched, his back ached and his bad shoulder — rotator cuff reinflamed from hauling his bag and Winston and sitting in a jump seat — lit up in searing pain every time he moved his left arm.

“You doing okay?” Dr. Bloom asked.

He probably _looked_ like roadkill too. Should have let Abigail cut his hair before he left.

“Uh,” Will said. He gave Dr. Bloom a wavery smile. “I have no idea.”

“The jet-lag from Alaska must be awful,” Alana said, her head tilting in that clinical-motherly-interested way.

“I could have probably handled the two hours of sleep these last couple days if I hadn’t spent twenty of the waking ones in a cargo jump seat,” Will laughed darkly, rolling his stiff shoulder.

Alana frowned.

“You rode _cargo?_ ”

“Have you ever met a Ranger, Dr. Bloom?” Will grinned.

She rolled her eyes. “Masochists, all of you. In love with those monsters.”

“When you’re in one, you understand,” Will said. But she wouldn’t really. He refused separation not because he was in love with the Jaeger, but because the Jeager was _him._ A monster made to hunt monsters.

“I have an itinerary for you,” she said, handing him a manilla folder.

“A physical _and_ a brain scan, seriously? At 7 am?” Will said, then read through the rest. “This is fuckin’ ape shit.”

Dr. Bloom’s lips twisted. “Suit measurements too. Jack wants to get you started right away. No time to waste,” she said, and gestured for him to follow her through the doors.

When the doors shut behind them with a great mechanical grinding, Will had to remind himself of where he was. _Hong Kong. Not Anchorage._ It was the smell. All Shatterdomes smelled the same. Engine grease. Plasma fire. Damp concrete. Ammonia. He’d worked in the hangars the last four years or on occasion, a classroom. He hadn’t ventured into the bowels of a place like this since his last statement to PPDC and K-Science. His left shoulder and chest had been covered in layers of bandages and immobilized in a sling and all the higher ups, Marshal Thibodeaux included, all viewed him as some broken, brave soul. Dr. Bloom had shouted herself hoarse on how they’d ignored her previous evaluation and how it was PPDC’s fault Abigail Hobbs was an orphan.

For Abigail’s sake, Will was glad the world thought Hobbs had died in the Jaeger. A hero.

“Come on,” said Dr. Bloom, startling him out of his thoughts.

They descended in the elevator with a few techs who cooed at Winston and either didn’t recognize Will or pretended they didn’t.

“The mess hall is behind that door,” Dr. Bloom said, pointing to a pair of double-doors. “Dinner’s in a couple hours. Then over here —” They continued down the hall. “Here is the K-Science lab and across from it is the Med Bay. Dr. Sutcliffe will do your neural scans tomorrow, and then Dr. Zeller will do your physical tests and suit measurements.”

Will tried to look, if not enthusiastic, not actively horrified.

From his glances through the occasional glass panes, it looked nearly identical to the Anchorage Shatterdome. Achingly and frightfully familiar.

“Marshal Crawford’s office is down here,” said Dr. Bloom. She gestured to a left wing of offices, and then turning to the right wing, said, “These are the psychiatric offices. I have my own where I take patients.”

“Is there more than one shrink here?” Will asked.

“Me and Dr. Lecter,” she said.

Probably a name for the ‘avoid like hell’ list. Speaking of which, Freddie Lounds and Frederick Chilton were definitely here as well.

“What’s he do?” Will asked.

“Research, mostly,” said Alana. “He has a few patients.”

Whoever this Dr. Lecter was, Alana seemed to admire him. As long as he didn’t poke into Will’s brain his judgement could wait.

“Kwoon Combat Room?” Will asked.

Alana smiled, and led the way.

“Rangers, all the damn same,” she said, and Will resented her for it.

* * *

“How’s Hong Kong?” Abigail asked, her voice tinny on the phone.

“You really want to know?” Will replied.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to press away the headache building behind his eyes since he got on the flight from Alaska god knows how many hours ago. Between flying on a freight aircraft in a jump seat next to the rusted pieces of his old Jaeger, Requiem Shrike, the jetlag, and having to uproot his whole life alone, Will was surprised he didn’t have a full-blown migraine. He was surprised he was still alive.

“Yeah, I want to know. But I’m guessing it sucks ass,” she said, irreverent as always.

“Abbie!” Will laughed, a quick bark that made Winston whine and lick at Will’s free hand. “You’re right though, it’s shit. Have to take a fuckin’ elevator twenty stories up just to let Winston piss on real grass. All the concrete is claustrophobic as hell and worse, it makes everything echo so it’s ten times louder than it should be.”

Will shifted in the metal chair in his sparse barrack. He pet Winston’s head where it settled in his lap.

“That sounds awful. How’s the food?” she asked. Will groaned. “That bad, huh?”

“So bad it makes me miss your cooking,” Will said.

“You are such an asshole.”

“Last time I let you look after my gumbo you burnt a crust on the bottom of the pan.”

“I hate you,” Abigail grumbled. “I’m eating the last batch you left in the freezer by the way. It’s real good.”

“You know I’m kidding. You’re a decent cook when you care to be,” Will said. “How’re you and Buster holding up all the way up there?”

Abigail sighed. They both regretted sending the sled dogs away to new fosters, but knew without Will they’d just be a millstone around Abigail’s neck.

“I went fishing yesterday. Managed not to burn the fry-up — thank you very much — and Buster got some fish heads as a treat. He keeps looking for Winston. I’m not sure he really misses you yet, but it’ll sink in for him soon.”

Will smiled again, thinking about his terror of a terrier. The only person Buster really liked was Abigail.

“And your training?”

“The physical stuff is fine. I’m worried about the drift training coming up in a few weeks, but my favorite is still the Kaiju xenobiology.”

“There’s more than one way to hunt a Kaiju. Problem solving is hunting.”

“Like what you used to do in the classroom?”

“Yeah,” said Will. “Closest I could get without...”

“Without completely losing it again?” Abigail said. She sighed, her fork clanking on a plate. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I miss you. It’s not the same without you.”

“I miss you too, Abigail,” Will said, still rubbing Winston’s ears. “When you’re done in couple months you can transfer, or with any luck Marshal Crawford will fire me and I can come home.”

He heard her throat click, swallowing down whatever feeling had bubbled up that she didn’t want to pour out over the phone.

“When do you start?”

“I have a bunch of shit at some sort of ass-crack of dawn hour,” Will complained. “Full physical and brain scans, suit measurements, then a meeting with the Marshal in the afternoon.”

Abigail made a displeased noise. He was just glad her shocked, stony silence after Marshal Crawford and Dr. Bloom had left the cabin hadn’t been permanent. She’d emerged from the back room looking like a ghost, shotgun slung low. _They’re taking you away?_ When Will had nodded, she retreated to her room and didn’t speak to him until dinner the following evening.

 _They’re taking you away and you’re letting them,_ she’d said over salmon and potatoes, then flung her full water glass at Will’s head. It had missed by a hair and shattered on the wall. She’d tackled him down and beat and clawed and cried and he barely had the heart to dodge her blows, let alone defend himself. _I have to,_ he’d said. _I have to, I’m sorry. I’d rather leave than watch you die._ Somewhere between giving the dogs away and dropping Will off at the airfield, she’d forgiven him. _Damn you. Now I need a new sparring partner,_ she’d said instead of _goodbye._

“Isn’t it almost morning where you are?”

“Yeah, it’s like 1 am,” Will said. “What time are you?”

“8 am,” Abigail said.

“So you’re eating gumbo for breakfast?”

“Better than oatmeal,” Abigail pointed out.

“Oatmeal’s better for you,” Will said.

“Yeah, if you’re an old man who needs his fiber.”

“I’ve been gone less than two days and you’re dragging me through the fuckin’ mud, kid,” Will laughed.

“What are you gonna do, make me clean the deep freezer again?” Abigail taunted back.

“Nope,” Will said. “Not _making_ you do anything. You’re _going_ to clean it. And clean the gutters, and chop the wood, and clip Buster’s toenails because guess what? You’re the man of the house now.”

“Ugh, fine,” Abigail groans. “But I’m wearing your Carhartt overalls. And the flannels you left. And I’m getting Buster done by the vet.”

Will grinned.

“Of course you are,” he said. Then, softer, “Miss you, Abigail.”

“Miss you too, Will,” she said.

“I think you’re about to be late for your classes and I’m ‘bout to fall asleep in the most uncomfortable metal chair I ever sat on,” Will said. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

“I’ll pick up. Get some sleep, old man.”

“Bye, kiddo.”

Abigail hung up first.

Will sighed, heavy, and stood stiffly off the chair. Winston scrabbled after Will while he unpacked his duffle bag on the standard-issue cot in his tiny barrack. At least it was a single room. He fished through his clothes until he found a fresh shirt and pajama pants, then collapsed onto the cot, no sheets made up.He was out in seconds.

* * *

The air smelled like blood and ammonia and mechanical grease. Blood. He was covered in blood. Flesh parted under his bare — bare? — hands. No, his hands were plate metal and plasma fire. No, his hands were bare. He was alive. He was on fire.

* * *

He hated the MRI and he hated being in a hospital gown and he hated Dr. Sutcliffe and he hated how his cold fingers pressed the wires to his head. _Carcass. That’s all I am to these people. Meat and misfiring electricity._ His body didn't know what time it was even though he definitely got to the med bay before 7 am. His head threatened to split open. His shoulder didn't feel any better. 

“Your scans are similar enough to the one’s you had taken four years ago that we shouldn’t have to adjust the interface we made for you,” Dr. Sutcliffe said, not even looking Will in the eye. Just stared and stared at the black and white brain matter on the computer screen. “You’re lucky you’re still a right-handed pilot.”

It used to be phantom pain in his shoulder. Now the pain is real. He shouldn’t have carried Winston onto the plane and busted four years of careful physical therapy just because his dog didn’t want to leave Alaska.

“When do I get to test the new interface?” Will asked.

“I’ll have to consult the engineering department,” said Sutcliffe. “Marshal Crawford might know better.”

The treadmill, the breathing tests, the heart monitors, the blood draws and the range-of-motion tests that followed weren’t the worst, but they were a solid, numerical reminder that he’d been old when he started and he was old now.

* * *

“You’re Will Graham,” said an inky-haired woman in safety goggles and a face shield with an artful spray of Kaiju blue over it. “You wrote that monograph on Kaiju age classification based on scale ossification.”

Will frowned, surprised anyone had read it. He’d written that monograph up between deployments as a way to keep his brain focused and out of his co-pilots heads. And he’d killed more than one of them all. Knifehead, Yamarashi, Mutavore, Slattern, Leatherback, Raiju, Scunner.

“Well, you cut up enough of them and you can tell,” he said. “Dr. Komeda’s work was more comprehensive anyways.”

“Doesn’t mean that’s what we use as the standard,” said the woman, her hip cocked and brow raised in open defiance. “I’m Beverly. Beverly Katz. These two apes are Dr. Jimmy Price and Dr. Brian Zeller.”

“I resent the categorization,” said Jimmy, an older, clean-cut man in a lab coat with a decidedly kooky air about him. He thrust a Kaiju-gut coated gloved hand toward Will as if to shake it, then flushed and stripped it off. “I’m Jimmy Price, and if anything I’m an old barnacle. My colleague Dr. Brian Zeller here is the real ape.”

“Thanks, dude,” said Zeller, rolling his eyes while Will shook Jimmy’s hand.

Jimmy’s eyes raked over Will, appreciative but not impolite, and in return Will smiled.

Zeller didn’t bother offering his hand to Will. That suited Will just fine.

“Jimmy works with me. Zee’s our physiologist and suit fitter but they don’t like him upstairs,” said Beverly.

“Thanks for letting me back in the lab,” Will said. “It’s been a while.”

“Been a while since you were in a Jaeger too. You ended up too unstable?” Beverly asked.

Will stilled, fighting the instinct to flinch. _Unstable._ After the first counselors and therapists tried to poke at his adolescent brain looking for what made him know things a kid had no right to know and, later, what made him crack a kid’s skull for nearly assaulting a girl, he’d quickly locked up any hints of his strange imagination. Unnatural and sensitive little Willy Graham, who turned his weirdness to books and bugs and a police badge in the murder capitol of the States.

The drift had stripped him of any hiding. The second he got stuck in that machine, he’d been marked as the new hot girl of drift psychiatry. The shrinks he’d narrowly avoided all his life now clawed for the privilege to root around in the mind of the only known universally compatible pilot. Everyone’s favorite carcass displayed on the table as the hungry masses salivated over it like a buffet for the starving.

It only got worse when it turned out he could rack up a Kaiju kill rate as high as his NOPD close rate. It only got worse when Freddie Lounds leaked it to the whole damn world and made some kind of false idol out of a freak show. It was just his job. Just his duty. He hadn’t picked having this fucked up brain.

But Beverly didn’t look at him like she wanted a piece of his brain — or his flesh (he got plenty of that too). The warm curiosity and dark humor in her expression comforted him.

“If your brain was capable of being successfully hooked up to anyone’s you’d be unstable too,” Will laughed, a little dry.

She grinned. “One day I’m gonna hook my brain up to one of these beasts.”

Will blinked.

“I see we’re both crazy.”

“Hell yeah, Graham,” Beverly said.

Self-consciously, Will smoothed back the over-long curls that kept flopping onto his forehead. He should have taken up Abigail on her offer to trim his hair before he left. Out of the corner of his eye, Jimmy tracked the movement of Will’s hand.

“You want updated measurements from me?” Will asked Zeller. “The nurses in med bay said you’d be here instead of upstairs.”

“I do,” Zeller grumbled. “I can fit you now if you want.”

Will forced himself to nod.

He let Zeller lead him over to a tucked-away part of the lab and draw a curtain closed. There were black suits in clear lockers all around the room and an uncomfortably exposed pedestal in the center.

Will untied his boots and left them beside the pedestal while Zeller busied himself with laser measuring instruments.

“You can strip,” Zeller said, avoiding Will’s piercing stare.

“How far?” Will asked.

“Underwear,” Zeller said.

Taking a deep breath and then letting it out, Will undid his belt and the zipper of his heavy cotton trousers. Every clink of metal echoed in the enclosed space. He kicked his pants free and started on the buttons of his gray-green flannel.

Finally standing in his boxers, Will washed down the strangeness of standing bare in front of a stranger. It wasn’t even the cold air on his legs or through the thin cotton of his boxers. It was the press-memorialized, ragged scar on his left shoulder and the white lines trailing like a circuitboard away from it. The hospital gown had been better, even with his ass out.

Will sensed the second Zeller registered the old injury. The air, oppressively hot before, went cold.

“ _Shit,_ ” Zeller breathed.

Will bit hard on his lower lip and forced his eyes to the ceiling.

“I have a rotator cuff issue on that side,” Will said. “If you need to calculate limited mobility into the new specs.”

Zeller didn’t say anything, thankfully, and went on to measure with consummate professionalism Will hadn’t expected from the younger man.

When he was done and Will dressed, Zeller spoke again. “Your specs are close to before, so I suspect we won’t need to put you through any additional training or do too much adjustment. Is the shoulder bothering you?”

Will blinked.

“Since I got here, yeah. Stiff.”

“Beds suck,” Zeller said, reluctantly commiserating. “Are you going on the floor anytime soon?”

“Tomorrow, I think,” Will said.

“Shit, ok. I can find you some naproxen and cold packs,” Zeller said.

“Thanks,” said Will.

“20 minutes off, 20 minutes on. Two pills every twelve hours.

He took the cold pack and the bottle of pills. The former he slipped under his flannel but over his worn t-shirt. The latter he promptly measured into his palm and dry-swallowed before emerging from the fitting room.

Jimmy was back to working on the carcass of a Category 3 with Beverly scribbling observations on a whiteboard behind the steel dissection table.

“Is it true that the neural handshake time record is yours?” Jimmy asked.

“Depends on what that record is,” Will said, blinking.

“Four hours and eleven minutes,” Jimmy said.

“Oh,” Will frowned, disappointed that neither the tech nor the new pilots had progressed beyond Will. “Yeah that was mine.”

“That’s fucking crazy,” Zeller said.

“Probably,” Will said. “Hey, do any of you know where to get a decent coffee here?”

“Shrink’s offices,” Jimmy said immediately.

Will sighed. He could live with the black tar-like liquid from the mess hall.

“Drop by whenever!” Beverly shouted to Will on his way out.

“I might,” Will said.

The coffee in the mess hall was, in fact, awful, but he felt slightly less like a corpse after the third cup in quick succession. Though, the naproxen might have kicked in.

He checked his watch — 12:15 — and decided he had enough time to take Winston outside before meeting with Jack Crawford.

* * *

“Where’s Dr. Bloom?” Will asked, frozen on the threshold.

Marshal Crawford turned towards the door and silently waved Will into his office.

“Dr. Bloom hosts therapy sessions in the mornings,” said an unfamiliar man with a European accent whose origin Will couldn’t place. The man met Will halfway and shook hands. His hand was warm, strong, and calloused along the pads of his proximal finger joints. Like Abigail had from her hunting knife. “I’m Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a pleasure to meet you.”

He was tall, with a hunters grace and a painfully controlled manner of carrying himself. Leonine. Will liked the graceful slope of his nose. It was…an interesting face.

“Will Graham. You Alana’s replacement or are you working on the recruits too?”

Dr. Lecter smiled — or rather, he smiled behind the fog of his shuttered expression.

“I should, perhaps, let Marshal Crawford explain,” said Dr. Lecter mildly.

“Dr. Bloom specializes in existing Drift relationships and she’ll be there during your tests. Dr. Lecter has more experience with matching and screening pilots in the program,” said Crawford. “He works well with the more unusual brand of psychiatry and has a keen insight I thought would be useful, considering the sheer numbers.”

Will sat down at the large conference table covered in manila folders. Everything ached, especially his busted shoulder. He’d tossed the melted ice pack into the K-Science lab mini fridge while they’d been on lunch break to avoid carrying a bag of warm gel around. He wished he had it cold now. While Will knew it was the result of carrying his damn dog and then too many hours in a jump seat and too few hours in a terrible cot, a part of him swore it was the sheer sense memory invoked by the smell of concrete and engine oil and the mixed sweat of hundreds of bodies that could only sum up to a Shatterdome.

“This is certainly an unusual psychological circumstance,” Will said, pulling a few folders closer.

 _Brown, Matthew,_ the label read. _26\. Academy graduate._

“Indeed it is. Alana and I differ slightly in our approaches to mental well-being and stability, especially in assessing compatibility for piloting a Jaeger,” Lecter said, stubbornly remaining standing.

Perhaps he didn’t want to crease his navy trousers and matching waistcoat.

“How so?” Will asked.

“I was a surgeon before I became a psychiatrist. It offers me a perspective on what the body and brain are subjected to while you are half of a machine and half of someone else’s brain. And more, I view each patient as unique. As is each body. I tend to avoid sweeping diagnoses and categorizations and focus on individual adjustments. Uniqueness is worth celebrating,” he said, looking appraisingly at Will, “and I find myself reluctant to smother it for appearance of normalcy.”

He could appreciate that. Dr. Bloom had slapped a lot of warning words on his evaluation including _likely empathy disorder, subject unconsciously mirrors speech and body language, mild to severe post-traumatic stress disorder triggered by conn-pod disconnection, aneurotypical responses to PONS,_ and, the kicker, _high likelihood of mental instability._

“What we do is not normal,” Will said.

After Dr. Bloom’s evaluation he’d been put back in Requiem Shrike with Garrett Jacob Hobbs for a year. Six deployments. Six successful kills, including the Knifehead that nearly killed them both on impact. Hobbs had survived the Kaiju. He hadn’t survived Will Graham.

“How many unpaired candidates do we have?” Lecter asked.

“About thirty-five total,” Crawford grumbled. “Ever since Lounds leaked your story about Hobbs and made you a rockstar, we’ve tripled the people coming through the program. They aren’t coming in pairs anymore. All thinking they can do what you do.”

“Tasteless,” Will hissed.

“I have to agree,” said Dr. Lecter. “Miss Lounds exposed you in more ways than one.”

Will snorted. “That’s for sure. I could live with the world seeing my mangled body half naked and covered in blood. Having to sleep with a shotgun next to my bed in case a reporter came by was harder.”

Lecter smiled, his quiet laugh no louder than a sigh.

“Now all those kids that saw the articles are looking to be heroes. To get famous like Will Graham,” said Marshal Crawford. “Harder and harder to find the good ones in the glut of new recruits.”

Not to mention all that was supposed to be _classified_ until Freddie Lounds decided she wanted to be a whistleblower.

“They want to be _heroes_.” He growled the last word with as much derision as he could put into it.

“You don’t consider yourself one?” Lecter asked. “Even though the world still does?”

Will snorted. “This isn’t heroic, Doctor Lecter. What we do is ugly. Necessary, but ugly. Like custodians.”

Lecter smiled.

Will flicked through the pages of recruits and veteran pilots. Some looked more promising than others. He promptly threw out five files based on feel — not gutsy enough, too slow, too high potential for chasing the rabbit, too malleable — then slid a few files out into a pile of definites on the large conference table Crawford’s office. Just because he fit everyone didn’t mean everyone was good for _him._ But he preferred to keep the shrinks hazy on those details. People had tried to find Will’s logic in the pages before without much success. 

“Matthew Brown and Tobias Budge?” said Crawford.

Will added a few more names to the _worth a try_ pile and another to the _not in hell_ pile.

“Brown’s cocky as all hell and a rookie, but I can work with it. Might need a steady hand but he’s got promise. Budge is older, worked with another pilot before and no reports of his head spinning out. He won’t bleed into me too much,” said Will.

Lecter circled the table slowly like a shark, his stare intent and piercing over the photographs and evaluations spilling out of manilla folders. He leafed through both the discarded pilots and the ones Will selected, his face a mask of curiosity.

“You prefer a more forceful personality?” Lecter said. Will blinked. _How…_ “Or perhaps simply a less mercurial one? To more clearly delineate yourself from your partner in the Drift?”

Will recoiled. Lecter’s eyes were so dark they glittered in the eerie office light. It was like looking into a black lake, stepping in one foot after the other in icy water, limbs disappearing as they entered the water with no way of telling if the next step would meet the lake bottom or a never-ending chasm.

The doctor continued, taking full advantage of Will’s outraged silence. “You must have a vast capacity to assume another’s point of view. I imagine the drift strips you of any barriers in your mind. Do you merely reflect your co-pilot, or are you also altered in the drift? Subsumed?” Lecter asked.

“I have enough barriers,” Will snarled back. “I’m not losing myself.”

“The memories and feelings of another, all the horrors of our time, all the private...carnage. They must come quickly,” Lecter shot back. “And shock your sense of self.”

“Barriers come quickly enough,” Will said, turning back to the evaluation files.

“I imagine the rotation of minds is easier on you than a long-term drift, if what you fear is losing yourself.”

Will’s livid glare, aimed at Dr. Lecter, rounded on Marshall Crawford — “Whose drift compatibility is Dr. Lecter working on, Marshall? Hmm?”

“Will, please,” Lecter said, aiming for placating. It raised Will’s hackles.

“Whose drift profile are you working on?” Will accused him.

“I can’t turn my mind off any more than you can, Will,” Lecter said.

Lip curled, Will said, “ _Don’t_ psychoanalyze me.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abigail demands Shatterdome gossip, Freddie Lounds is a thorn in Will's side, and Dr. Lecter brings Will dinner.

**Hong Kong Shatterdome**

* * *

“Are you fucking kidding me?” said Abigail.

Will laid prone on his cot, atop the military issue sheets and woolen camp blanket, properly showered and with a vague ache in his belly that signaled hunger. The debrief and triage session for co-pilot candidates with Marshal Crawford had lasted a good part of the afternoon.

“I wish,” Will drawled, rubbing his face.

“He sounds like an asshole,” Abigail said.

“He’s…fine,” Will admitted.

“Are you sorry you won’t be seeing as much of Dr. Bloom?”

“Sorry? Hmm. I don’t know about that,” Will said, shifting his sat-phone to his other ear. From what he remembered of his interactions with Dr. Bloom nearly five years ago, Dr. Lecter was more insightful about the intricacies of matching Rangers and strain of piloting. Almost as if he’d been through the process himself. Unlike Alana, the Drift and Will’s strange mind didn’t frighten him.

“Inconvenient, I think,” said Will.

“What, inconvenient to flirt with her?” Abigail asked.

“If I’m flirting with her it’s less likely she’ll insist on doing a psych eval again,” Will pointed out. “ _Ethics_.”

“Oh, god. You’re awful, you know. You ever think about having a genuine interaction with anyone without thinking about how you’re maneuvering yourself?”

“Do _you?_ ”

“Woah, back off Dr. Graham,” said Abigail.

Will laughed, and put a hand to his chest in mock offense.

“Oof, harsh.”

“Did you narrow down the pilot list though?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “I brought it down to twelve.”

“Are you testing them out tomorrow?” she asked.

“Shoulder’s still busted so I managed to get another day of rest tomorrow. I might check on Shrike and catch up on the reports,” said Will.

“You busted your shoulder _again?_ ” Abigail scoffed. “How did you do that? There’s no wood to chop or me to throw you around the room.”

“You don’t _throw me around_ ,” said Will, voice rising in indignation. Abigail’s silence meant she had her lips pursed in a picture of _yeah sure, old man._ “I couldn’t get Winston on the plane, had to carry him and my bag. I have some PT homework, I’ll be alright. Tell me about you.”

Abigail sighed.

“I’m...okay. Long day training.”

“Yeah,” Will said.

“Yeah,” she breathed in reply. “So, anything else happen to you today?”

“A lot,” Will admitted.

“You mean more than Crawford pushing as fast as he can to get you out there in a Jaeger?”

“Mm,” he hummed. “Everything’s relative. Had a brain scan and a physical. Turns out I’m not completely falling apart. Met the K-Science team. The lead xenobiologist here is maybe crazier than me.”

“Now I’m listening.”

Will chuckled. “She wants to drift with a _kaiju_.”

“Oh, hell,” Abigail drawled with the same cadence as a Graham.

His Daddy would have liked Abigail. He wouldn’t know what to do with a girl, but he’d shoot beer cans with her out back and show her how to operate a boat. He’d make her flies for Christmas and buy used books at the library for a dollar when he ran by there. The thought of them together ached, like the old shrapnel wound in his left shoulder.

It was a sad thought.

“Will?”

“Huh?” Will started.

“I said I should take Buster out one last time and head to bed. Talk tomorrow?” said Abigail.

“Sure, kid.”

Hell, he’d gone all maudlin. He didn’t want to worry about her all alone in that cabin. She had a good head on her shoulders. Better shot that him and nerves of steel. Abigail would be just fine as long as he kept the kaiju from her door.

Once Abigail hung up and Winston had received arguably (to Will) enough belly rubs, Will started on Zeller’s dreaded list of exercises for his shoulder. They weren’t daunting, just an unpleasant reminder of the months after his injury. He went through the motions. Arm twists with his elbows straight and fingers outstretched, half and full bow raises (the full bow was beyond his pain tolerance), and full two minutes of tucking his arm behind his back until his elbow lay at his torso. Hell. Abject hell. Will broke a sweat and cursed through three repetitions.

“This is _your_ fault,” he told Winston, who cocked his head on Will’s cot. Imperious little thing, laying in bed while Will slowly tortured himself. “If you hadn’t eaten all those sausages — _fuck —_ or just gotten on the damn plane I wouldn’t be considering just getting it _removed._ Actually — _Jesus,_ why does getting pinned with scrap metal have to still _hurt —_ it’s Buster’s fault for getting into the sausages, I know you succumbed to peer pressure. And second, it’s my fault for bringing you here. It’s my damn fault. I’m going to get my ass wiped by a bunch of teenagers in the Combat Room and I don’t even have a tub I can fill with ice and lay in until I die of hypothermia.”

He brought that thought up short. Shouldn’t joke about those sorts of things, not when...well.

Done with his complaining and his shoulder feeling remarkably more limber, he stripped off his damp t-shirt. He tried not to look at the ragged scar on his shoulder or the red pattern left by his old suit on his skin while pulling a clean long-sleeved shirt on.

With a click of the tongue, Winston was at his side.

“Ready for dinner and some poking around, buddy?” Will asked as he clipped Winston’s leash on. Winston whined and beat his plumed tail against Will’s thigh.

Will waited until Winston sat perfectly at heel, eyes on him, and then with anther click of the tongue — _heel —_ they set off towards the mess hall. He passed techs and custodians and engineers, thankful that most of their attention stayed on Winston.

With it being a little after five, the mess hall had yet to pack with people. He quickly piled a plate high with chicken, mashed potatoes and some rendition of glazed carrots. A second plate for Winston just had chicken.

Will found an empty table in the back where he could see the whole room. He and Winston wolfed their food down in silence.

He recognized one or two faces from the files he’d looked over earlier in the afternoon. Matthew Brown chatted with a few burly men in the black coveralls from engineering and mechanics. His dog tags glinted as he animated his way through some story or other.

Chewing overcooked carrots without tasting them, Will watched Brown out of the corner of his eye. The man glanced Will’s way a few times, each preceded by a dramatic flourish in his story. Peacocking. An admirer of Will’s, then. Connection-seeker.

Scanning the mess hall for any other faces from his list, Will didn’t notice the ambush until it was too late.

“Hey, little man,” said a noxious voice followed by the equally noxious floral-chemical scent of Freddie Lounds’ drugstore hair product. “Can’t believe they let you back in the program.”

The sight of Freddie never failed to trigger an unholy need to see his hands wringing her neck. He regretted that he’d never be able to do it considering the end of the world and all. Winston tucked himself around Will’s feet, whining softly/

“I don’t want to talk to you, Freddie,” Will said, sipping a glass of water and desperately wishing for something stronger.

She slid onto the bench across from him. Her corkscrew curls loomed as she leaned in.

“Everyone thinks you’re some traumatized genius they have to worship because you’ve got those baby blues and staggering kill rate and you lost your partner. I know better, Graham,” she hissed.

“Glad you think so,” Will said, still refusing to meet her eyes.

“What happened to that Hobbs girl anyway? She disappeared same time as you. You scramble her brains like you did her father’s?”

Will slammed his cup of water on the metal table. To his enormous satisfaction, Freddie flinched. He smiled at her, cold and close-lipped.

“Abigail Hobbs is at the Academy in Anchorage, which you would know if you ever fact-checked any of your gossip,” Will said. “Now you can talk about me all you like, but you leave that girl alone. She’s been through enough.”

She pursed her lips together, and it was a concession he never expected from her. Though, maybe he should have. Freddie was a lot of things — most of the words his brain connected to her were expletives — but she responded to truth. It was why she dug her claws so hard into Will. She smelled secrets like a bloodhound and he was a rotting carcass made of lies.

So she tilted her head like a dog listening for something, and said, “How long do you think you’ll last in the Kwoon Combat Room, old man? Busted up shoulder like yours and ten years older than most of your potential partners?”

He bared his teeth.

“I’m looking to find that out myself,” he said. “Since I didn’t get my reputation for nothing.”

“If your reputation is being a beast instead of a hunter, should you really be in a Jaeger? Or are we now using monsters to fight other monsters?”

“What do you mean _now?_ ” Will laughed. “Jaegers were designed to be monsters.”

“Yeah, but you _love_ the monstrosity.”

“No,” Will replied, clipped. “What we do is grotesque, but necessary. You and Chilton just love the _fame._ Where is your other, equally slimy half anyway?”

“Oh—” Freddie rolled her eyes — “probably practicing what he’s going to say to you in the mirror while he styles his hair and preens like a cockatiel.”

“If he’s still desperate to get some kind of secret drift technique out of me, it doesn’t fuckin’ exist,” said Will, pointing his fork at Freddie to punctuate his words.

She grinned, cruel and shark-like, before sliding out of the seat. “See you around, Graham.”

“Rot in hell, Freddie.”

With a mock-gasp and her hand on her breastbone, she said, “so you _did_ miss me.”

Will found it hard to stomach the rest of his mashed potatoes, but he shoveled them down anyways. Tomorrow, no one would bother him. He’d spend the day checking over the new repairs and upgrades to Shrike and no one would bother him.

* * *

A rapt knock on metal startled Will out of his work. The vibration along the railing, where his arm was braced, more than the sound, alerted him. Will set down his soldering iron and torch.

“Dr. Lecter,” Will said, pulling his face shield and heat-proof gloves off. Sweaty curls flopped onto his forehead. Will brushed them back with a slightly greasy hand.

So much for not being bothered. Lecter stood on the steel catwalk leading to one of the plate joints Will was working on, dressed in a sleek black cashmere sweater and trousers with a faint check pattern. His leather loafers gleamed. He held a thermos in one hand and a tote bag in the other.

“Will,” Lecter replied, quickly scanning Will over like a computer creating a catalog. Will felt a curl of satisfaction at the thought of Lecter being appalled at the mix of sweat, grease, and the standard-issue black coveralls of PPDC mechanics. “I trust I’m not interrupting anything critical.”

Not, _I hope I’m not interrupting,_ or, _are you busy?_ No, that was too banal. Lecter looked like a man who never apologized for anything. If he wasn’t going to extend Will a courtesy, it needn’t be returned.

“Did Crawford send you?” Will asked, wiping his face and hands with a clean handkerchief. His eyes flicked up briefly to Lecter’s, before focusing down on the stubborn black smears around his own cuticles.

“I came of my own volition. I brought a peace offering,” he said, unfazed by Will’s tone or shuttered body language.

Reaching into the tote bag for a glass tupperware container, he handed it to Will. Will took it, a frown flickering over his face.

“You brought me lunch?” Will asked, turning the container slightly. It looked like some sort of stew. Blissfully warm.

“Dinner, actually,” Lecter said.

Will glanced at his watch. 4:36 p.m. Damn. His new awareness of the slipping time sent a twinge through his stomach. He hadn’t eaten anything that day except a small bowl of oatmeal and several cups of the tar-like coffee the cafeteria served. And it was late in Alaska. Almost midnight.

Lecter stared at Will expectantly. Will stared back. He decided he could eat quickly, avoid the cafeteria, and call Abigail a little late.

“You said this was a peace offering?” Will said.

Will’s knees faintly protesting — _god, how’d he get to be 36? —_ he settled onto the open steel grate of the catwalk, letting his legs hang down. With Lecter watching him with faint, perturbed curiosity, Will gestured to the space beside him.

“Indeed,” he said, and after a beat, settled beside Will.

He disbursed silverware and napkins between them and popped open his own tupperware container — gently balanced on his lap. Will mirrored the motion. Whatever it was — some sort of beef stew rich with red wine and thyme — it smelled divine.

The thermos turned out to contain red wine, which Will regretfully turned down. “Meds,” was all Will said, and it seemed to mollify Lecter.

“Mm,” Will hummed around the first spoonful. It tasted divine too. Herbs and broth, tender vegetables and melting chunks of beef on his tongue. “Food’s good. Thank you.”

Lecter watched Will over his own bowl of stew with the simmering, reserved satisfaction of a cat bringing a dead bird to the front stoop. _Ferragamo-wearing dick of a psychiatrist and decent chef._

“I would apologize for my ambush in Jack Crawford’s office, but I expect that sort of thing will happen again. I’ll have to use my apologies sparingly.”

“Just keep it professional,” Will frowned.

Lecter’s lip twitched.

“Or we could socialize like adults,” he said, punctuating with another prim mouthful. “God forbid we become friendly.”

Will snorted, focusing on the contents of his meal. It’d been a while since he had a properly cooked dinner. He made his own oatmeal that morning to avoid the dubious cafeteria scrambled eggs, but couldn’t avoid the sad offerings on rotation for the other meals.

“God forbid,” said Will, though his knee-jerk distaste for Lecter had been slightly mollified by the food.

He wondered how a man who dressed like that, who cooked like that, and who thought so damn highly of himself he’d all but promised to _keep offending_ Will, ended up in the Hong Kong Shatterdome. How he ended up on a catwalk suspended five hundred feet above the bottom of the dome next to an ex-Ranger everyone treated like a hero or a ticking time bomb.

“You got a fancy kitchen somewhere to make this?” Will asked.

“Just a hot plate and a few other things in my quarters. Though I sometimes take over for the cook if there’s a successful run,” said Lecter. Will could see him hosting lavish dinner parties in some other life. “I always cook for myself. I’m careful as to what I put in my body and the cafeteria offerings are rather...”

“Disgusting?” Will offered. Lecter’s eyes crinkled in silent agreement. “How long have you been on base?”

“Two years,” Lecter said.

“And before?”

There was a measured silence.

“Japan, and before then, Germany. Yourself?”

Japan, where Dr. Du Maurier conducted her research and where Chiyoh had first plucked him out of the rabble and whipped him into shape. He hadn’t seen Dr. Lecter there six years ago, so he must have still been in Germany. The real curiosity was what he’d been up to in Germany in those years immediately after the first breach.

“Quid pro quo, Doctor Lecter?” Will asked.

“It’s only fair.”

“Is it? My life’s plastered over the news rags and you’ve probably asked Alana and Crawford all about me,” said Will. “I don’t know anything about you except that you’re a neuropsychiatrist conducting research on social exclusion and drift behavior.”

“I can’t say I asked my colleagues anything about you,” Lecter said smoothly, not answering Will’s bid for more information. Of course, either could easily have offered information about the infamous veteran Will Graham, the only universally drift compatible pilot in the whole program. “And as for news rags, even with sources such as Miss Lounds, they hardly have the story from your own mouth.”

Will snorted. “The papers have the rest of it more or less right. I was retired. There’s not much to tell. I used to split my time between teaching at the Academy and this —” He gestured at the towering mass of sleek black metal that was Requiem Shrike — “sort of thing. Basic hydraulics and mechanics.”

Lecter nodded in appraisal.

“You last piloted four years ago, is that right? Knifehead.”

“Yep,” Will said. He scraped up more beef and vegetables with his spoon, while Lecter waited patiently for Will to elaborate.

Will didn’t elaborate.

Finally, Lecter cleared his throat and gestured to Shrike with his fork. “She’s beautiful. I remember when they released the Mark III. I admit it’s one of my favorites.”

Will glanced up at the massive hunk of metal, pride swelling in his chest. She was beautiful. All black, save for the new pieces of plate under the conn-pod chamber and around the shoulder which had recently been replaced. The white antlers emblazoned across her breastplate glowed in the light.

“Titanium and carbon fiber. Leaner, but denser than the other Mark III’s. She’s got a top-notch plasma knife,” said Will.

“Is she nearly serviceable?” Lecter asked.

“After four years of fixing her up, yeah she is. Engineering is taking care of the new conn-pod. As soon as its done Marshal Crawford wants to do a test run,” Will said.

“I admit I’m looking forward to seeing you in your element,” said Lecter. “Do you miss the savage pleasure of the hunt?”

“It’s a duty, not a pleasure,” Will replied, a little too sharp.

In Lecter’s stony face, not a single muscle twitched.

“A traumatized veteran with a knack for the monsters,” said Lecter. “Pulled from the cabinet by Jack Crawford and dusted off for a special occasion.”

Thick, syrupy discomfort oozed through Will, and he didn’t like that Lecter seemed determined to crack him open. The food kept him from baring his teeth.

Will scowled. “Are you calling me fine china?”

Lecter took another bite of his food. He ate neatly, but not fussily. He ate like someone hungry, but not so hungry he couldn’t savor it.

“I think Uncle Jack thinks of you that way,” said Lecter.

Will laughed, tight and wounded. The _presumption._ The promise to keep offending.

“Not fine china, but an old teacup,” he said, and Lecter gave him a curious look. “Filled up with boiling water over and over and over, stained and scrubbed and chipped. One application of gravity away from shattering.”

Lecter’s focus constricted. His attention felt heady, itchy, heavy. Maybe a little addictive. Will kept his eyes locked firmly on Lecter’s, made gold and blue and glittering in the Shatterdome lights.

“Its nature fundamentally unchanged despite the scorching heat applied,” Lecter said, lip twitching, the creases of his eyes deepening.

Will swallowed a hard lump in his throat. He couldn’t _know_ that. No one _knew_ that.

“How do you see me?”

“The mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by,” said Lecter.

Will stilled. He turned the words over in his head. Even Alana, who was not so secretly interested in him, preferred him as fine china rather than a creature with teeth. Even if those teeth were pointed at a Kaiju. His assessment of Lecter shifted, ever so slightly.

“If I’m chasing snakes,” Will said carefully, thinking of Marshal Crawford’s ambush at Will’s cabin, and before that, the fallout of Hobbs’ death. The constant reassurance that Will wouldn’t break and the inevitable break that ended in bloodshed — the reassurance, for Crawford’s own sake, that Will’s teeth never pointed anywhere they shouldn’t. “I’m St. Guinefort.”

Lecter laughed, close-mouthed.

“You think Uncle Jack will put you down like a rabid dog, imagining the worst of the blood on your teeth?” Lecter asked.

_Yes,_ thought Will. He’d already bitten into something he wasn’t supposed to, lucky that Crawford had seen Hobbs as a snake too. But Crawford would only lose so much sleep if Will were buried in the seabed.

His patience for the conversation evaporated, Will set his empty bowl and spoon between them. The sound rang, sharp and hollow, in the echo of the Shatterdome. The vibration hummed under them.

“Thank you for the meal, Dr. Lecter,” Will said. “I’m late for a call.”

Will helped pack up the tupperware and flatware as politely as he could. His whole body protested getting up off the catwalk, and he was sure Lecter felt it too. Though with how untouchable the man seemed even a decade senior, maybe he didn’t.

“Thank you,” Lecter said when Will handed him the packed tote bag. “For allowing me your company.”

Will’s ears warmed. “I’d normally wash that up for you but I don’t have the time tonight.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Lecter said, tilting his head. He smiled a little broader, so that it actually moved his mouth. “Perhaps I can convince you to join me for dinner at a table so that you may get your chance.”

Will frowned, opening his mouth just to close it again. Brushing off the strange feeling that he’d just been _flirted_ with, he walked ahead on the catwalk and hoped they would part ways when they reached the throughway. Lecter instead followed him to the elevator.

“I don’t know about that,” Will said, pushing the button on for the floor his barrack resided on.

Lecter didn’t choose another floor. _Great. Same floor._ Unless he was walking Will to his room, which was arguably worse.

“Then take time to consider it. My kitchen — makeshift as it is — is always open for friends.”

The elevator let out. Lecter still walked in step with Will until Will reached his quarters.

“I don’t find you that interesting,” Will said, pausing outside his door.

“Then you and I are both alike,” he said, smiling a feline smile. “Uninteresting.”

He left Will at the door, the echo of his Italian loafers echoing softly on concrete.

_Uninteresting._ Of all the...

“Bastard _,”_ Will muttered.

The conversation stayed with him as he quickly changed out of his coveralls and into a clean pair of pants and a thick flannel, leashed Winston, and took them up to the world of the living so Winston could use the little strip of grass out on the edge of the airfield. There, idly walking with the Hong King skyline stark and looming, he dialed Abigail’s number.

“You’re calling late,” said Abigail after four rings. She sounded drowsy, but not like he’d roused her from sleep. “I thought I wouldn’t hear from you today.”

“It was a long day,” Will said.

“Are you outside? It hear wind and machines and stuff.”

Compared to the din of the Shatterdome, the planes and helicopters milling above and across the airfield were positively peaceful. He was surprised he’d tuned them out so quickly.

“Yeah, I’m walking Winston. He misses grass almost as much as I do,” Will said. “How were classes?”

“Pop quiz today in lab,” she said. “I think I aced it.”

“Hey, good job. How’s Buster?”

“Pedicured.”

“By your hand or someone else’s?” Will asked.

“Mine,” she said. “He was a good boy. I made the chicken stuff he likes to reward him for his good behavior.”

“You doing alright, the two of you?” Will said. “You got classmates checking in with you and all?”

“Yeah,” Abigail sighed. “I talk to some of them. There’s Casey and Monroe, they’re alright. They’re the only ones who didn’t interrogate me about what happened with my dad and you.”

The sound of Abigail’s voice, the gentle pace of his boots on the grass strip running the edge of the airfield, and the steady jingle of Winston’s collar tag melted Hong Kong away into the trail behind the cabin. It would still be frozen, but with that gentle softening of ground that came in late April. The stream they fished gurgled as he walked the worn path along it, side by side with Abigail.

She wore his brown thermal overalls and a thick, wool plaid jacket. Her cheeks were flushed red from the cold, like always.

“Tell me about them?” Will asked.

“Casey’s cool. She’s from Tennessee. About my age. She’s got it in her to pilot. She’s not afraid of anything,” said Abigail. “And Monroe’s her friend. He’s more into the theoretics of drift. Talks a lot about what a drift _really_ is and what it means to be drift compatible and stuff. He never asks about you, but I know he’s curious about what you do.”

Beside him, Abigail wore an expression of ease, but under it, Will sensed the tension of the exchange. He heard it grinding like a hand crank on a generator, approaching the ignition point but too far off. They never had these kinds of conversations before, but they seemed critical now. He wondered what she really itched to tell him.

Maybe the moment they were approaching wasn’t a spark of life, but the inevitable, violent obliteration of it.

“A lot of people are curious,” Will said. “Can’t blame them.”

“Monroe’s in love with a kid named Zach,” Abigail told him, a clear shift away from Will and the whole one-way drift thing he did. “Tall, dark and handsome or whatever. He’s never going to get the nerve to talk to him.”

“Trouble connecting?”

“Trouble reaching out,” said Abigail.

She sounded far away and tinny, and the woods behind their cabin were gone, leaving him with just Winston in an airfield in Hong Kong. He’d walked a long while down the grass strip, so he turned back toward the Shatterdome entrance.

It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it anymore when she changed the subject again. “So did you just poke around Shrike all day or anything else keep you?”

_Anything else keep you?_ Now wasn’t _that_ a loaded question. He weighed it. Switching hands between phone and Winston’s leash, he considered telling her about Dr. Lecter, about the dinner and then the insistent invitation to another dinner. About how he’d left Will at his door joking that Will was _uninteresting._ Which, considering how bald-faced a lie it was, shouldn’t have lodged uncomfortably under Will’s skin.

“Not really,” Will said.

“But you were thinking loudly about something just now,” Abigail said.

“What are you, my therapist?”

“Worse. Family.”

_Family._ The memory of his father playing the absolute hell out of some Hoagy Charmiachel or Patsy Cline on an old piano at a neighbor’s house in Mississippi, belting with his rough, smoke-ragged voice, flickered in his head.

“I was thinking about finding a piano,” Will said.

“I didn’t know you played.”

“Only a little,” he said. “Rusty as all hell.”

“I’d like to hear it, if you find one.”

“No promises that it’ll sound any good," Will warned her.

“I don’t expect much. Let me know how the selection goes tomorrow and if you get your ass kicked.”

Will grinned. “I’ll do my best. I miss you.”

“Night, Will.”


End file.
